


and the world was gone

by lady_mab



Category: Lockwood & Co. - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: F/M, Gen, Not Really Character Death, Not quite a relationship, Weeping Angels - Freeform, nothing like a dw crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-03-04
Packaged: 2018-01-14 13:00:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1267453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_mab/pseuds/lady_mab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Childhood is an odd thing. </p><p>	It is filled with moments that are so vivid at the time you are experiencing them that you are convinced you will never forget them. </p><p>	But then the inevitable happens. </p><p>	Life gets duller and duller, and the horrible things that happen along the way shove out the wide-eyed wonder you experienced as a child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wish you felt me falling/I wish you'd watch over me  
> You said you'd wait forever/But I blinked  
> And the world was gone

That evening, as we prepared in silence for our new case, I was compelled to place a quick and discreet kiss upon Lockwood’s cheek.

He stopped immediately, turning his wide, curious eyes in my direction. I feigned ignorance, resumed packing the chains, and hoped that George had still been looking away.

“Is everything alright?” Lockwood asked. At least he had enough tact to not bring substantial attention to my action.

My hands faltered, slipped on a link, and I cut my finger on the silver. A blossom of red formed, spreading down the metal and trickling to my palm. “I don’t know,” I admitted. I had no idea what drove me to do that, to break the unspeakable distance between us like we were something closer than boss and assistant.

His callous hands closed around my injured one, forcing me to set down the chain. “George, can you fetch the bandaids?”

“It’s not that bad--”

“Yeah, it’s not like you tained them with your blood or anything--”

“Nothing is _tainted_ \--”

“George.” Lockwood’s voice was sharp, cut through our banter, and the mild humor between us deflated. “Bandaids, if you please.”

Our third comrade muttered something under his breath along the lines of _I do not please_ , but he obeyed all the same because Lockwood’s word was command. He held my hand, and he kept my gaze until the sound of George’s pattering up the stairs into the kitchen faded away.

“Lucy--”

“I’m fine.” I pulled my hand away, relieved that he didn’t try to stop me. I stuck the injured finger in my mouth, focusing instead on the taste of my blood than the feel of his cheek beneath my lips. “I honestly don’t know what came over me. But--” I stopped, looked up at him, and couldn’t finish my sentence.

He waited, patiently, until I refused to pull my hand away from my mouth and continue. “But what?”

“But nothing,” I blurted, dabbing the finger dry with my skirt and turning my attention to the chains. “You really don’t think these are ruined, do you?”

Lockwood didn’t say anything for several seconds, letting me fret about the stained silver and doing my best to buff out the blood. Then, he reached out and cover my hands, lowering them back to the table. “Is your intuition telling you something?”

I lifted my eyes to his, and the indescribable feeling returned. My gut clenched with disappointment -- a deep and painful wrenching that I never experienced before. “I don’t know. Maybe? It hurts, really bad.” I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to steady my breathing. It was like an invisible claw had pierced my ribs and grappled with my heart.

His fingers lifted to my cheek, brushing over the spot where, seconds before, I had kissed his. “Lucy, I--” he started, but then George began his noisy descent and the space was placed back between us.

The moment was over. The hand lifted. I could breathe again.

George grumbled about my clumsy behavior and how it could cost us in the field as he gingerly wrapped the bandage around the barely-visible cut. Lockwood assumed responsibility for cleaning my chain. I stood there, surrounded by their motion, and let the commotion wash over me like a wave of static.

The evening went downhill from there. 


	2. Chapter 2

Childhood is an odd thing.

It is filled with moments that are so vivid at the time you are experiencing them that you are convinced you will never forget them.

But then the inevitable happens.

Life gets duller and duller, and the horrible things that happen along the way shove out the wide-eyed wonder you experienced as a child.

Sure, there are moments as you grow that are worth keeping, worth the extra space you allow them in your head and in your heart.

You try not to think about what you sacrificed in order to remember this new moment.

When I was young, about six or seven, some time after my father died, I remember one ghost in particular.

None of the details of the apparition stuck out in my memory. My Sight was never that good, anyway. Better than my other two sisters who possessed Talents, but not as strong as it could have been.

Hearing things was my specialty.

And this ghost, this weak Visitor that would appear on no set schedule and linger just out of range, this ghost caught my attention.

After I joined the agency and commenced my training, I would skip off to find this Visitor on evenings we didn’t have a case. It’s location changed constantly, and this told me it wasn’t your average Type One, or even Type Two.

But it was non-violent. That was the strange thing. It never approached me, remaining the careful maintained distance, retreated whenever I approached, content to leave the meters between us as I sat on a ledge in companionable silence.

I caught wisps of its voice on very rare occasions. Like static clogging the radio station, its words would float through the distance and white noise to hum in my ear. One time, I thought it hummed.

The last day I ever saw the ghost, shortly before my thirteenth birthday, its voice came through loud and clear. I sat on a broken wooden post by an abandoned field, watching the Visitor flicker in and out of my line of sight. It was nearly two in the morning.

It took several seconds before I realized that the words were coming to me in confident bursts, an SOS to get my attention.

When I looked up, the Visitor was gazing directly at me. I couldn’t make out the features of its face, but it was at once familiar and completely strange.

“ _Lucy! Lucy, watch out!_ ”

I leaped to my feet, rapier at the ready, and whirled around to find absolutely nothing behind me.

“ _Lucy--!_ ”

I realized that the voice was his voice, the Visitor’s. But when I about-faced to see the wavering outline of a ghost, there was nothing there.

\--

I remembered the pain and anguish in his voice for months after that, replaying the sound of it over and over again in my head. It wasn’t a voice I knew, so what would make him cry my name like that?

The most logical possibility was that it was simply another Lucy, the Lucy who loved this man, and he loved her so much in turn that his spirit continued to roam the endless days looking for her.

My heart ached for these two, the departed Lucy-that-wasn’t-me, and the trapped Visitor who only wanted to protect her. How had they died? Did they die together, or was one saved and then forced to endure their remaining years without the other?

I only made myself sad dwelling on it.

Luckily, I suppose, as is the nature of childhood, I soon forgot all about the pair.

The traumatic loss of my teammates at the old mill replaced it. One heartache for another. At least this one was mine to bear.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

"Are you _sure_ this is the place?"

"You suggesting the client lied?"

I offered a half-formed shrug and a noncommittal noise. "Or you got us lost."

Lockwood held up a hand before either George or I could launch the next attack. "A place doesn't have to look haunted to be haunted."

"Truer words never spoken by our brave leader," George intoned with mock seriousness and waved his hand in an airy fashion about himself.

This only got him a faint frown, though Lockwood's expression could just as easily be described by the same thing I felt:

There was no presence of supernatural activity.

It was only seven on a bright spring evening, but the sun was starting to sink -- and generally, one of us would have sensed _something_ , some sort of lingering residue.

This house, while run down and suffering from water rot, was as ordinary as they came.

"What did your research turn up, George?" Lockwood rested his hand on the pommel of his rapier, gazing up and into the distance.

"The client just purchased this house a few months ago. She says that she hears strange noises, and the statues in the garden move out of the corner of her eye." He didn't even bother pulling out the small leaflet he had compiled the few days leading up to this moment. There had been no deaths in the house, unusual or otherwise.

"A low-level poltergeist, perhaps?" I offered. "Would explain any noises and the moving statues."

"Perhaps a murder victim  was buried out here, out of the public eye and all that. Would explain why nothing ever popped up in the archives." George trailed off and offered a shrug of his own. We were grasping at straws.

Lockwood remained silent the entire time. After our conversation dribbled to a stop, he took a deep breath.

George and I waited, looking to him for some sort of profound insight.

In the end, he just let it out in a heavy sigh and hitched his bag higher up on his shoulder. "Let's set up base, then we'll investigate while we still have some natural light. This wouldn't be the first time we were called out to a hoax or a cat, so the more we can see, the better." He took off with his long-legged strides, leaving George and I to exchange uneasy glances before following after him.

"D'ya think something is wrong?" I muttered out of the corner of my mouth. I stayed behind to keep pace with George, even though we traveled light.

"With the case? Definitely."

"With Lockwood."

He considered my question, his pudgy face and flush cheeks screwed up in thought. The dying light reflected off the lenses of his glasses. "Perhaps."

My voice dropped even softer. "You don't think it's a money issue, do you?"

George's firm denial gave me the slightest bit of confidence. "No, of course not. I've been keeping a close eye on the funds, ever since we had that whole Fairfax fiasco." He chuckled at the alliteration.

I wasn’t too sure, but there was nothing I could think of to support my unease. We all felt it. We just didn’t know how to be the first to break the thin layer of comfort.

We set up our base in the back of the house, the broken yet grimy glass affording us a jagged view of the conservatory beyond. The temperature stayed mildly pleasant throughout.

“Talk about one heck of a fixer-upper,” George muttered. “There is mildew everywhere, over half the windows are broken, and check out this graffiti.” He ran the tip of his finger over the swirls of blue that formed indecipherable letters on the chipping paint.

“It’s very nice handwriting for an act of vandalism.” I tilted my head to the side, studying the narrow curves and hurried slant. Something about it was oddly familiar, but nothing that I could my finger on. “I wonder what it said.”

“Probably some anti-political message having to do with the Problem. What else are vandals going to complain about but politics?” George snorted and finished his portion of the preparations.

Lockwood remained silent. When I looked, hoping to gain some sort of insight on his mood, I noticed that his normally refined features were pale and drawn tight.

There was something bothering him, and he was upset that he couldn’t figure it out.

By the time we were finished, it was a quarter until eight. The sun was nearly below the line of trees, and still there was no presence of Visitors.

“George, I want you to take the upstairs.” Lockwood broke his silence and shook off his discomfort. “Lucy, take the front of the house and then sweep around outside to the back. I’ll take the ground floor and the conservatory. Should be late enough that, if there is indeed anything here, we’ll feel it.”

“Got it.” I put on what I hoped was an encouraging smile and took my leave.

I could hear the two boys talking in low voices as soon as I was far enough way. I wondered if they were talking about me, and that’s why they waited until I left.

Squaring my shoulders and pushing aside the uncertainty, I strode through the dust coated halls and out the front door, back into the dying light that painted the grassy field a faint orange.


	4. Chapter 4

I had a pen pal when I was younger -- about from when I was eight until I turned eleven. My handwriting was a mess, especially then. It hasn’t improved much, but I never prided myself on being a girl of letters.

Still, I found the first one nestled in between loose stones on the wall bordering my preferred path home. The envelope stuck out, incongruous with the rest of the scenery. My elder sisters passed it by as the flounced up the trail, yet it called out to me alone.

I stopped, pulled it out, and stuck it into the pocket of my coat when my sisters called for me.

I might have been young, and not very well educated, but I could still keep up a correspondence.

The author of the letter introduced himself as a young man from the city. He was a businessman, who had his ups and downs, and after the most recent crisis, somehow found himself alone in the countryside trying to make a new start for himself.

His handwriting was narrow and slanted as if he wrote it in a rush, but there was something about the words he painted that told me he took his time and crafted each sentence with care. I liked him immediately.

It took nearly a week, between hiding my progress from my mother and my siblings, and fitting it in around training with Jacobs. My handwriting looked like it had taken me ages to painstakingly carve each letter out of stone. It looked so childish compared to his, but it was neat and that’s what mattered.

I left the letter in the same crack as where I found the first.

Three days later, another envelope became stationed in the wall and I snatched it up without a moment’s hesitation.

The author thanked me for responding to the random letter -- he had been afraid that his thoughts and story would go unnoticed, despite how much it meant to him to write it down. He asked me about myself, my family. What did a young girl do during her downtime in such a small town in the middle of nowhere.

I told him that there was nothing more to say about me than what I said in the first letter. I was boring like that, just as boring as this little town. I told him my father died when I was young, that my mother worked day and night to keep my sisters and I afloat. I told him that I could Hear things, and sometimes See things. I told him that I longed to be in one of the famous agencies in London, even if I knew it was the dream of a silly little girl who didn’t know any better.

It was several months before the reply came. I had begun to fear that the strange young man I had never met left without saying goodbye -- as if two letters from me was enough to warrant a cursory ‘farewell’. Or, I feared that I had insulted him in some way. While most children with a Talent were respected and the agencies were all but temples of their own, there were some who thought what we did was not natural. That Visitors walked our realm for a reason, and destroying them was denying them their precious right to correct whatever wrong had occurred to them while in life.

But, on my ninth birthday, I found his third letter.

He told me that I was amazing and strong, for being so young and able to do so much good. He said that any agency would be lucky to have me, and I nearly cried as I read the letter late at night, after not receiving anything all day.

I wanted to meet him, but all I did was to convey my sincerest thanks in my wobbly, adolescent handwriting.

The years continued and we wrote back and forth. I often tried to lie in wait at the crack in the wall that signified our unconventional mailbox. Either he arranged it so he would receive my letters when I had a case and could not sit around, or I fell asleep for five or ten minutes and he would sneak in to change the letters.

I wondered if he knew my face, knew what I looked like. He must, because I found myself starting awake on the low wall on several occasions with an envelope pressed into my hands or nestled beside me on the stones.

He didn’t talk much about himself, asides from the few candid remarks about his business and his family. He supported me when no one else would, asking about my progress under Jacob’s tutelage.

Our last letters came after I earned my rapier.

He congratulated me from the bottom of his heart, and I could feel every ounce of emotion behind the words. I felt like we were best friends over the last two and a half years. But he had bad news, and that was he would be unable to continue our correspondence.

He wished me luck, and hoped that I would succeed and become one of the most amazing Agents in the history of the Problem, greater even than Fittes herself.

I cried again that night, as my rapier sparkled with my hopes and dreams. I burned the letters the next day. I put that relationship to rest, just like I would a Visitor.

As I watched the embers fade into dark, I realized that I never learned his name. 


	5. Chapter 5

There was nothing of note in the front of the house, unless you counted the sad remains of a small orchard stretching bony fingers of shadows toward my ankles.

Readings were inconclusive, lacking any real evidence to there being a Visitor on the premises. If anything, the moving statues was due to a prank by local kids.

I sighed and headed to the backyard.

Lockwood was standing in the doorway to the conservatory, staring down at his thermometer with a gentle frown pulling at the corners of his lips. He looked up as I stomped around through the dead grass. “Anything?”

“I think there’s a family of opossum living under the west side of the house, but other than that, nothing.” I stretched my arms over my head and cracked my neck. “You?”

“A new found approval for a mop and broom.”

I smiled despite myself, glad to hear the trace of humor in his voice despite his sour expression. “This will be a very charming house once it’s fixed up again. So sad it had to fall to ruin.”

“Yes, curious why it did. What would make the owners move away from here.” He clipped the thermometer onto his belt and came to join me in the grass. “How are you feeling?”

Quite certain a blush stained my cheeks despite my best efforts, I avoided his gaze and shrugged. “I’m feeling fine.”

“You’re not lying to me, are you?”

I wasn’t. I felt nothing, none of the lingering hesitation from back at home. “I want to go on a picnic.”

I saw his reaction out of the corner of my eyes, the way he jerked back a step and regarded me with confusion. “Where did that come from?”

“You asked me how I felt. I feel like we should go on a picnic one day. Pack up a basket with snacks, maybe bring the skull in the jar if it behaves. Go to a park or the country and have a picnic.”

There was a long pause before Lockwood exploded in a fit of laughter. It was so sudden and unexpected, even more than my own idea, that I had to turn and look.

His expression was completely devoid of the frown he carried with him from London. It was replaced with a brilliant smile that I rarely saw. “Lucy Carlyle, you strange girl. Focus on the task at hand!”

“You focus!” I retorted, reaching out and shoving his shoulder playfully.

“Stop trying to domesticate me, vile woman. You should be thinking of how to work on your rapier form instead of planning a vacation.”

I shoved him again, this time a bit harder. He stumbled beneath the force, though the smile never vanished. “My footwork is better than yours.”

“That’s a lie.”

“I respect you too much to lie to you.” I held up my hands and beckoned to him, too amused by this sudden change in banter to be embarrassed.

I saw his posture shift and his center of gravity drop. He was changing to a fighting stance. He was going to put me to the test.

I side-stepped his feint, and whirled out of reach when he executed a perfectly formed lunge. The angle of his legs, the straight line of his back and his arm, was textbook. And yet he managed to always make it appear so fluid and effortless.

He moved again, and I was too distracted by his form to properly avoid. My feet moved on instinct, dancing far enough away, but he caught my shoulders before I could react. The warmth of his hands seeped through my cardigan, and his fingers applied the slightest bit of pressure. “Never boast, Luce. It’s unbecoming.”

I was too caught up in the intensity of his eyes to say anything clever in response.

And for some unknown reason, he stepped forward and placed a kiss upon the corner of my mouth.

“Oi!” George’s voice floated down to us from the second floor. “Anthony J. Lockwood, you utter wanker! Was this your ulterior motive for hiring a girl?!”

To his credit, Lockwood didn’t jerk away. He tilted his head back, hands still gripping my shoulders. “Of course not.”

“Lucy, do you have anything to say for yourself?!”

I didn’t. Because the sinking unease that had plagued me back at the house had returned, settling into the pit of my stomach. A chill spread up my spine despite the warmth that radiated from Lockwood’s touch.

He must have noticed a change in my expression, because his fingers returned to my face. “Lucy?”

“Something’s coming.”

"Lockwood?"

He ignored George's wavering voice. "Lucy, what do you feel?"

"I'm scared... It's old and vast and--"

"Lockwood!"

"And I'm scared of that feeling."

"Lucy!" George switched his attention to me when Lockwood continued to ignore him. "I see something coming from your left!"

Lockwood and I jerked our heads to the side. All we could see were two stone angels, frozen in mid agony at the border of the forest.

The feeling was overwhelming now. "Those statues..."

"They weren't there before." Lockwood's hand found my shoulder as he blindly reached out for me. "Get inside."

"But--"

"Get inside!" He shoved me in the direction of the house and the spell was broken. We stumbled, my feet drunk and heavy with terror, toward the house.

We passed through the conservatory and into the kitchen. George's footsteps thundered down the stairs, and he spilled into the puddle of light -- wide-eyed and out of breath.

"They moved," he gasped, immediately spinning around and securing the door with filings. He waved a hand, speechless, at the entry to the back patio.

"The walls of the conservatory are made out of iron," Lockwood supplied. "Even with all that glass missing and all the rust, it's enough iron to keep any Visitor at bay."

I remained frozen where my feet deposited me, just inside the doorway. "I don't think they're Visitors."

George and Lockwood turned confused frowns in my direction. "What do you mean?" George pushed his glasses up his nose and swiped at the sweat on his brow. He still managed to look infinitely more perturbed than necessary. "If I had to guess, I'd say a poltergeist, like your original assessment. I don't think I've heard of any cases of possession, but there is a first time for everything."

“But can you See anything?” I glanced between the two, and they in turn exchanged glances of their own. “No, right? No death glows, no ectoplasm, no miasma. I can’t Hear a single sound.”

“But what you feel--”

“You feel it too, I think.” When Lockwood quirked his brow, I waved my hands about in a flustered fashion. “The kiss. I know you well enough, I’d like to think, to not believe that was any sort of _romantic_ inclination. You must have felt the same thing I did back at the house--”

“Hold on,” George interrupted, clearly upset about this turn of events. “You kissed him first? When?!”

I dismissed his questions with a wave of my hand. “You felt compelled to do so, like some long-forgotten memory resurfaced, an overwhelming urge.”

His expression shifted to something more and more astounded as I explained. He pouted, a surprisingly childish tilt to his chin and lips, but quickly replaced it with a familiar thoughtfulness. “What do you think this has to do with our statue friends, then?”

“I don’t know, honestly.” Before I could draw a breath for the next sentence, however, the lamp we set up on the table flickered.

While the two boys turned their attention to it and the door leading into the house, my gaze immediately jumped to the backyard.

An angel stood stationed just outside one of the broken windows of the conservatory. One hand reached toward us, stone fingers grazing the iron bar that formed the frame.

My hand swung out in an attempt to catch someone’s attention, and I only ended up catching George in the gut.

He grunted under the force. “What was that--”

I just pointed.

They turned, saw what had caught my attention, and froze.

A long, uncomfortable silence stretched between us before George managed a shaky, “Where is the second one?”

“Perhaps... still in the forest?” I ventured hopefully.

The light flickered again. When it steadied, the angel was at the door to the conservatory, and George nearly shrieked at something behind us. It was perhaps the most undignified noise ever known to mankind, and while I would have loved to tease him about it, I was currently too shocked and terrified by the sudden movement of the angel in my line of sight to actually manage a comeback.

“Or...” he started, voice still fraught with treble. “It could be right behind us.”

Lockwood and I about-faced, hands falling on the hilts of our rapiers. The second angel lingered at the doorway, hands pointing down toward the filings with a look of extreme anger and frustration. Something crunched behind us, like a foot trodding on broken glass, and I glanced over my shoulder to find the first angel halfway across the conservatory.

“It moved again,” I breathed, my voice caught halfway between my throat and the lump constricting my airflow. “Every time we take our eyes off of it it moves.”

“Then just don’t look away,” George said, his voice bordering on hysterical laughter.

“I can’t really keep both eyes on it forever!”

“If you need to blink, let one of us know and we’ll turn to relieve you.”

“That’s not even funny!”

Lockwood made a small noise in thought. “This is a very interesting predicament.”

The light on the table flickered in response, and when it blacked out for a split second, the entire room was plunged into darkness.

I yelped and snatched at one of the flares on my belt just as it came back on. The angel had moved several feet closer.

“They’re popping in a bit close, don’t you think?” George aimed a nudge of his elbow backwards, blind, and caught me in the ribs.

“A little too close for comfort,” Lockwood agreed. “I vote for a hasty retreat, and we’ll return again in the morning. The rest of you?”

“Sounds swell. But are we going to retreat backwards?” Seeing as George kept his eyes on the one from the hall and Lockwood was focused on the one from the conservatory, I had the opportunity to glance frantically back and forth between the two of them.

Their stone faces were twisted in grotesque pain, sharp teeth the stuff of nightmares. Either the Problem had escalated over the last few years, or it was infinitely more awful than we originally thought it was, and there was more frightening, unimaginable things out in the world.

I don’t know what option I liked better.

“Lucy, you’ve got your eyes free, right?”

“I-I suppose...” My hands were sweating so bad that I nearly dropped the flare several times. Our lights were still flickering precariously, and in each surge of light I could tell that the statues had changed. Just slightly. The hands reached closer. The gaping maw opened wider. I could feel their screams in the pit of my stomach.

Lockwood reached back, grasped the sleeve of my coat just above the elbow. “Guide us out of here.”

“Are you sure that’s--”

“We’ve got no other choice! There’s no way we could stay here with these lights until dawn. And if you use a flare, the smoke will make it impossible to keep our eyes on these things.” His word was final, and I felt a little safer knowing that at least he wasn’t going to let fear of the unknown get to him.

I take his hand in mine and place my palm on George’s shoulder. “You ready?”

“Oh, I can see where I’m going just fine. There’s no way I’m taking my eyes off of this thing. Man, I wish I had a camera!”

“The last thing I want is taking a picture of this thing with me when we leave this house. On the count of three, Luce.”

I counted along in my head, taking deep breaths to steady myself as his voice pulled out each syllable. We hit three. I took the first step, and George moved forward with the pressure at his back.

Lockwood, perfect in his footwork as always, retreated in time.

The two of them kept their eyes glued to the statues, their stone torsos slowly twisting with the flickering light to watch our progression.

“Don’t let them touch you,” I said for the sake of saying something. “They might not be ghosts, but I have a feeling it would be far worse than Ghost Touch.”

We squeezed past George’s angel statue, and then the both of them were behind us.

“Lucy, switch with me.” Lockwood squeezed my hand and pulled me into rank.

I spared the briefest second to look up at him as he slid past, and I caught his eyes long enough for him to deliver a confident smile.

“I’m going to unlock the door and clear the exit. Just keep your eyes on them.”

“Eyes have been glued, Lockwood. You don’t need to keep us updated.” George fidgeted at my side, one hand on a flare and the other on his rapier.

I heard Lockwood’s footsteps leaving us behind, and my heart jumped into my throat. I still grip the flare in my hand.

Several tense moments passed before I felt the light evening breeze on my back and the tension around us dropped just a degree. “Alright you two, let’s get out of here.”

“George, you’re first.”

“Isn’t it ladies first?”

“You’re slower. If we’re going to make a hasty retreat, we can’t be relying on you to bring up the rear.”

“I’m too distracted to come up with a good comeback to that, Lucy, but just you wait. You’ll get a skull in your shower when you least expect it.”

I saw him shift out of the corner of my eye, but I was too busy making sure my full focus was on the angels down the hall. George’s statue had turned around all the way, and the one that followed us in from the back garden is nearly level with it. Our light was blinking in and out more often and for longer intervals of darkness. “Hurry up!”

“Lucy!”

I took this as my cue, turning about and advancing the first few steps toward the door -- toward George and Lockwood, toward relative safety. They were both looking past me, at the statues, trying to keep them in check with sheer force of will alone.

My foot hit the threshold and something in Lockwood’s face shifted.

“Lucy, look out!” He grabbed my arm and yanked me out onto the porch.

I stumbled down the stairs, tripping over my own trembling feet, and caught myself before I could spill into the dead grass.

His back was to me, his rapier out, and the angel’s hand poised just before his face.

“A third one,” George groaned, wringing his hands from his position several meters from the stoop.

I yanked my rapier free of its sheath and bound forward.

“Don’t!” He shouted, throwing a hand back toward me. And for some reason, he glanced at me over his shoulder. “Lucy--”

He vanished.

I might have screamed. I’m not too sure anymore. I just remembered the strangled look on George’s face and I remembered sprinting toward the house. My hand gripped the hilt of my sword and I swung, wild, at stone.

The angel was gone, the doorway was clear, and the light burned steady deep in the heart of the house once more. My blade bit into the wooden doorframe, and I struggled to yank it free.

It wasn’t until George joined me on the porch, his hands gently pulling me away from the door, that I even realized I was crying, and my throat burned from the screams.

We clung to each other in silence until, numb, we returned to the back room. There were no more statues. Our stuff remained where we left it.

We were alone.


	6. Chapter 6

When we returned to London, there wasn’t much time before the police brought us in. ‘Routine questions’ is what they told us. Trying to figure out what happened to our third teammate, our leader.

I couldn’t talk much. I could only stare listlessly at my shoes as George stumbled his way through an explanation that sounded less and less like truth the more and more he told it. But the story always remained the same:

There were stone angels that moved when we couldn’t see them. One touched Lockwood when his back was turned. He disappeared. The stone angels were gone.

There were no trace of the angels when teams went to the house in the following week. They stayed overnight. They searched both floors, the forest and the fields beyond, and declared the house safe from any supernatural threat.

I still couldn’t talk.

All I could think about was how this was all my fault. How I messed up again. How this time I lost one of my best friends, my leader, my teammate.

Only this time, unlike with the mill, there was nowhere else for me to go. I was sixteen. My time was running out. Fittes released an official report, and with that, mine and George’s names were marked with a black spot and “ongoing investigation”.

Anthony Lockwood was marked with a tiny footnote reading (deceased).

\--

Apparently, in London, when one of your team dies, you are given a sum of money as an apology. Normally, this would go to the next of kind and accompany a burial, but we were his family and we had no body to mourn over.

George and I stood silently, shoulders pressed together for support, trying not to look too ragged on the stage with members of various agencies spread out before us. We were handed a small envelope made out of thick cream parchment. Or more like it was handed to George. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do a thing.

Inside was a cheque, the commissioner shook our hands, and that was it. Cameras went off but I was blind to their flashes. Deaf to the condolences said lightly to our faces, but not to the words muttered out of the corners of their mouths.

_What if one of them killed him? What if they both did?_

_I wonder if they’re trying to cover up something._

_Stone angels that moved when you weren’t looking? This isn’t a fairy tale._

_We already have Visitors on our hands. We don’t need to go adding anything else to our list of Problems._

George and I returned to the house. He tore up the check and threw the shreds into the garbage disposal.

Eventually, we knew we had to speak. We knew we had to discuss the future of Lockwood & Co., seeing as there was no Lockwood, and we had no future.

Until then, we went into our rooms and shut ourselves in our own pitiful worlds. 


	7. Chapter 7

I couldn’t sleep after returning to London. At first, George and I didn’t sleep. We sat in the library, squeezed together in one of the oversized chairs, a pile of books on the table next to us. But we never picked them up. We didn’t bother doing any more research on the stone angels.

This was during the Fittes investigation of the house.

That lasted three days, then we resumed our solitary confinement in our rooms.

The day after the funeral, I tip-toed down the stairs from my attic room and hesitated on the landing. I could see the light on in George’s room, and for a moment I thought of going to him. We could resume our sleepless vigils, or maybe I would find enough comfort to actually succumb to the exhaustion that clung to my every fiber.

But then I turned and saw Lockwood’s door, dark and untouched.

As quietly as I could, I crept across the landing and eased open the door. His room was exactly as it should have been. Spare jacket draped over one of the bedposts, the sheets and duvet rumpled from where his bag and equipment had sat before we left.

In the corner of the room, half-hidden in a cloak of shadows, was his rapier.

Only... he had his rapier on him when he disappeared. It was possible that this was one of his backups, one of many that littered the training hall or the umbrella stand by the front door, but I knew this one.

It was the one he had on when we went to investigate the house.

It looked like it had aged a hundred years.

I closed the door behind me and pulled the blade from its sheath. It fought against me, but finally I was able to pop the rusted blade free an inch. How could something that was normally kept in such a pristine condition look like this? It was almost as if it had sat, unused, in this corner for a century -- the house build itself around the sword and this room.

I no longer cared. It was not worth troubling George over. I crawled into the bed, curled up into a tight ball on the disrupted sheets, and, somehow, managed to fall asleep.

It went on like this for nearly two weeks. Every night, I would slip down the stairs and fall asleep in Lockwood’s room.

If George noticed, he didn’t say anything.

One night, I heard a low, earnest voice speaking. The room was colder than usual, but I was too exhausted and too disappointed in everything to care. But then a breeze passed through my hair, and I heard my name, muttered in an all too familiar way.

I opened my eyes, blinking several times to see who was in the room with me.

“Luce?”

My body moved before my brain can fully interpret what I’m looking at. “Anthony!” The name was out of my mouth before I could stop it, and there was a look of panic over his face as I rushed toward him with outstretched arms.

He vanished before I could touch him.

“You can’t do that, Lucy.”

I twisted to find him sitting on the other side of the bed, looking as calm and collected as ever. Only I noticed the twinge of sadness at the corner of his eyes, and I could hear it in his voice. “What are you--”

“I didn’t expect you to wake up. I can’t stay long.”

“Lockwood, you’re _dead_.”

He shrugged, devil-may-care attitude still in place. “I suppose I am.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Time travel is a fickle thing.”

The air left my lungs and I deflated. “What--”

“The stone angel transported me back through time. Deposited me here.” He glances to the corner of the room, and I follow his line of sight to his rapier. “I had to leave it here in case I died. Then I’d have something to pull me back.”

I thought that I was empty of any more tears, but his words tugged at my heart and nearly brought back the feeling I had finally managed to combat. “Where are you?”

“I don’t really know anymore. I thought I had died of old age years ago, but I kept finding myself popping up again. Here and there. Stuck between the mind-numbingly boring routine of a Visitor while still being completely conscious.” He tapped at his temple. “Apparently all it takes is a little bit of brain power to do things normal ghosts can.”

“That’s not funny.”

“No, but you seemed to appreciate it all the same.”

Something shifted, long-forgotten and buried memories that I thought I was better without. Of letters and the cry of a man for Lucy, his Lucy, for me.

“I hate you,” I choked out, doubling over to hide my face in my knees. “Why aren’t you here?”

“I need you and George to keep on the name, alright?” The ghost hand hovered over the back of my head. I could feel the chill seeping in through the exposed skin of my neck. “Carry on the banner of Lockwood and Co. Who knows, maybe I’ll find a way to beat this predicament I have found myself in.”

“Don’t even joke like that. You’re dead. You disappeared and some people even think we killed you.”

He frowned, glanced down at his hand, and frowned deeper. “Well that’s just ridiculous.” Lockwood closed his eyes and braced himself on the edge of the bed. “I’ve done all I could for the two of you. I brought you here, and now the rest is up to you.”

“Wait--!” I lunged forward and my hand caught his wrist. There was a blinding flash of cold through my fingers, and my first thought was that I just inflicted Ghost Touch upon myself.

But then color returned to his hand, a spot of skin darker than mine radiated from my touch.

He jerked his hand back and stared at me with wide eyes.

Before I could get the chance to say anything, to form my jumbled words into thoughts, the door to his room opened and he winked out of existence.

George stumbled in, brandishing his rapier and a handful of filings. “Wassgoingon?” he slurred, blinking blindly at the room. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. “I thought I heard you talking... It’s freezing in here.”

The warm air from the hall rushed in and I felt myself begin to thaw. I hid my hand under the covers for a moment, until I could feel life return to my frozen fingers. I spotted Lockwood’s rapier in the corner again, and I slide off the bed and shuffle past George to pluck up the rusted case.

“That’s...” he started, knowing full well which blade this was. “But how?”

This time, I pulled the rapier all the way out of the sheath and studied the blemished iron in the weak light from the hall. “We have to keep going.”

I heard a whisper of iron as George sheathed his own weapon and pocketed his filings. He stepped closer to me and his hands close in on the sides of my face.

He moved to stand toe to toe with me, our foreheads resting together. His hands were clammy, and I could feel the tremors of his pulse in his grip. He must have been having nightmares. I was selfish enough to only think of myself and my own loss.

“We’ll hire on new Agents. Others like us, that had nowhere else to go when they came to the big city.”

“I’ll have you know I had plenty of places to go.”

“Then like me. Our Agency won’t die because we couldn’t pick ourselves up. It’s what Lockwood would want.”

He was silent for a long time, and for a moment I thought he had fallen back asleep. But then I felt the vibrations of a chuckle and he said, “I guess I should fish that cheque back out of the sink, huh?”

For the first time in a long time, a smile returned to my face and my hesitant laughter joined in with his. “We might need the money.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Childhood is an odd thing, I’ve realized. Every single choice we made is a movement in the direction that we find ourselves taking. You could ponder over hypotheticals all day (what if I had reacted faster in the old mill? What if I pretended like I couldn’t hear the voices of Visitors? What if there never was a Problem to begin with?) but in the end, when you look at where you’ve landed, you can’t help but think that there was some other hand guiding you along from a distance to place you right where you needed to be.


End file.
